Shakespeare's Kings (10 page)
The story of the last sad years of Edward's reign can be briefly told. In
1362
he made over Gascony and Poitou to his eldest son, to be held of himself as sovereign. At Bordeaux the Black Prince established a luxurious and sophisticated court where, wrote the Chandos Herald,
1
'since God was born, never was open house kept so handsomely and honourably.' He fed 'more than fourscore knights and full four times as many squires' at his table, and maintained a vast retinue of his own: pag
es, valets, cooks, stewards, butl
ers, grooms, huntsmen and falconers, insisting that he himself be served only by a knight wearing golden spurs. His lovely wife Joan was arrayed as no Queen of England had ever been, in furs, velvets and brocades, all ablaze with jewels. At his court 'there abode all nobleness, all
joy and jollity, largesse, gentl
eness and honour, and all his subjects and all his men loved him right dearly.'
The Herald may well have been right as far as the Prince's English followers were concerned; but the Gascons and Poitevins did not share their enthusiasm. For one thing, they were perfe
ctly
well aware that all this luxury was maintained at their expense, being made possible only by a savage taxation that increased year by year. For another, they themselves were treated as second-class citizens, and given few if any important or lucrative posts in the administration. The grumbling grew louder still when, early in
1367,
the Prince involved himself in the
1. The Herald of Sir John Chandos — whose own name is unknown - wrote a fulsomely admiring biography of the Black Prince in French verse: see Bibliography.
continuing struggle between Pedro the Cruel, King of Castile
1
- whose subjects had risen in revolt - and his bastard half-brother Don Enrique of Trastamara. Pedro was strongly supported by Edward of England, two of whose sons were to marry Spanish Infantas before many more years had passed; on the other hand he had incurred the hatred of King John's son and successor Charles V, whose sister-in-law he had married, then abandoned and quite possibly murdered. Seeing his throne now seriously threatened, he had appealed to the Black Prince who, never able to resist the lure of battle, led his army across the Pyrenees, where he was joined by another force under his brother, John of Gaunt. On
3
April
1367,
at Najera, the Prince won the third great victory of his career: a victory that ranked with those of Crecy and Poitiers, put Don Enrique to flight and re-established Pedro firmly on the throne of Castile.
But Najera, glorious as it was, failed to impress the Gascons. It was anyway no business of theirs, and when Pedro predictably defaulted on his promise to defray all the expenses of the expedition and the Prince in his turn announced new annual hearth taxes on the people of Guyenne, they decided that they had had enough and lodged a formal appeal to the King of France. Charles V was an intelligent, capable young man who had no delusions about the dangers ahead. Before taking any action he consulted a number of distinguished jurists from as far afield as Bologna; then, after carefully considering their opinions, he wrote to Edward in December
1368,
informing him that he was legally entitled to uphold the appeal and was in fact doing so. Edward, furious at what he considered an unwarrantable incursion on his own prerogatives, laid claim once again to the title of King of France; Charles replied by declaring all his French lands confiscate. It was an almost exact repetition of what had occurred with the French King's grandfather, Philip VI, thirty-two years before. In those days, however, Edward had been just twenty-five, in full possession of his youth and vigour; now, at fifty-seven, he was failing fast and no match for his shrewd young adversary.
Thanks to the outstanding military ability of his eldest son, this should not have constituted a serious problem; but the Black Prince's health
1. Castile and Aragon were separate kingdoms until shortly after the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile in 1469.
was also causing concern. Soon after Najera he suffered an attack of dysentery, which soon gave way to dropsy. By the end of
1367
all his once-formidable energy seemed to be draining away. He grew fat and bloated, and two years later was 'weighed down by so great infirmity of body that he could scarcely sit upon his horse'. At the siege of Limoges in
1370
he had commanded from a litter, the brutality of his subsequent order for the massacre of some
3,000
of its citizens, regardless of age or sex, being at least partly attributable to the acute pain from which he was by now never free. He returned to England in January
1371
and retired at the age of only forty to his manor at Berkhamsted, where - apart from a brief expedition with his father in
1372
- he survived for the next five years, dying on Trinity Sunday,
8
June
1376.
By now Gascony was as good as lost. John of Gaunt and others did what they could, but the French remained ensconced in their walled towns and
castles
, refusing to fight and frustrating all efforts to dislodge them. Brittany, left undefended, was quickly recaptured; and by the time a two-year truce was concluded at Bruges in
1375
the English possessions in France had been reduced to the city of Calais and a narrow strip of coast between Bordeaux and Bayonne - a poor enough inheritance for the Prince's son Richard when, just two years later, the crown was laid upon his head.
King Edward survived his eldest son for little over a year. On the Sunday before the Feast of John the Baptist,
21
June
1377,
he died in his palace at Richmond. He had reigned for just over half a century -rather too long in fact, since although he was still only sixty-four, the last fifteen years of his life had been increasingly clouded by a premature senility. It had attacked both his mind and his body, rendering him powerless to control either the ambitious, self-seeking courtiers by whom he was surrounded or the intrigues of his mistress, Alice Perrers. After the death of Queen Philippa in
1369,
his decline had accelerated rapidly. Philippa had tolerated his affair with Alice, even going so far as to install her as a Maid of the Bedchamber; she had also advised him, encouraged him, consta
ntly
reminded him of his duties as a King and prevented him from drinking too much. Bereft of her, he had slipped gradually into his long dotage.
For most of his reign he had been a good king, though not a great one. With his father Edward II, the prestige of the English Crown had sunk to its nadir; Edward III, succeeding at the age of fourteen, had
restored its reputation and given back to his people their self-respect. Tall and vigorous, with thick, long, golden hair and beard, he looked every inch a King and acted like one, indefatigable on the battlefield, the hunting field and, it was said, the bedchamber. Though never outstandingly intelligent, he possessed plenty of good sound common sense and a degree of self-confidence that frequently made him seem cleverer than he was. At Crecy, Poitiers and countless lesser engagements, his armies earned for themselves - and for him - a reputation for valour and military skill unequalled by any English monarch before or since. Thus, even though his private life was known to be far from blameless, he had earned the respect, admiration and even the love of his subjects, and had maintained them till the end. At his death he was genuinely mourned, and not only by the English: his old enemy Charles V of France ordered a requiem mass at the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, 'with as much pomp and ceremony', writes Jean Froissart, 'as if King Edward had been his own cousin'. It was to be a very long time before England was to look upon his like again.
[1377-1381]
'In what way are those whom we call lords greater masters than ourselves? How have they deserved it? Why do they hold us in bondage? . . . Let us go to the King - he is young - and show him how we are oppressed, and tell him that we want things to be changed, else we will change them ourselves. If we go in good earnest and all together, many of those who are called serfs and are held in subjection will follow us to get their freedom. And when the King sees and hears us, he will remedy the evil, either willingly or otherwise.'
JOHN BALL, QUOTED BY FROISSART
Queen Philippa had borne her husband twelve children, of whom seven had been sons. Of the five of those sons who survived to manhood, the first had been the Black Prince; the second, Lionel Duke of Clarence, had died as early as
1368,
at the age of thirty; the third conseque
ntly
plays a part in this story far more important than any of his brothers. Having been born in
1340
at Ghent in the Low Countries, he was universally known as John of Ghent, or Gaunt. In
1359
he had married his cousin, Blanche of Lancaster, by whom he had had a son, Henry; and soon after the death of his father-in-law he was created Duke of Lancaster in his own right. The duchy brought with it vast estates in the north, and with it John - who also possessed the three earldoms of Leicester, Lincoln and Derby — became, after the King himself, the richest and most powerful man in England. Blanche died young, in
1369
— Geoffrey Chaucer, who was on her husband's payroll, wrote his enchanting
Book
of
the
Duchess
in her memory - and in
1371
John married Constance, elder daughter and co-heiress of Pedro the Cruel o
f Castile and Leon, to whose titl
es — and later to whose crown - he also laid claim, although he never succeeded in making them his own. Of the two remaining sons, Ed
mund of Langley was born at the
royal manor of King's Langley in
1341,
created Earl of Cambridge in
1362
and Duke of York in
1385.
For him his father arranged a marriage to the younger of Pedro's two daughters, Constance's sister Isabella. Though he was twice to act as Keeper of the Realm, Edmund was
, as we shall see, a man of littl
e intelligence or ability. The youngest son, Thomas of Woodstock - born in
1355
after three more girls - seems to have been something of an intellectual, possessing as he did one of the finest private libraries in the country. He was greatly aided in its acquisition by the considerable wealth of his wife Eleanor, one of the joint heiresses of Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford, Essex and Northampton.
The five royal princesses were a good deal less fortunate than their brothers. Two died in childhood and two more - Mary and Margaret, respectively wives of John IV, Duke of Brittany and of John Hastings, Earl of Pembroke - found married life too much for them and did not long survive their weddings. The eldest, Isabella, became the wife of Enguerrand de Coucy,
1
one of the richest and most distinguished of the forty French knights who were being kept as hostages in England as security for the as yet unpaid ransom of the King of France.
2
In the hopes that he might settle permanently in England, Edward had made him Earl of Bedford and admitted him to the rece
ntly
formed Order of the Garter;
3
but de Coucy was to return to France as soon as he decently could after the death of his father-in-law, subsequently sending his unwanted wife back again to England with their younger daughter Philippa.
The laws of the royal succession were less clear in the fourteenth century than they are today, and after the death of the Black Prince there were no less than three potential aspirants to the throne. John of
- He is also the central figure in Barbara Tuchman's brilliant portrait of the fourteenth century,
A Distant Mirror.- See p. 38.
- Recent research has done much to confirm the old story, told by both Selden and Polydore Vergil, of the young Countess of Salisbury - with whom the King was at that time in love — dropping her garter at a ball held in Calais in 1347 to celebrate the fall of the town, and of Edward picking it up and binding it round his own leg, rebuking his tittering courtiers with the words
Honi soit qui mal
y
pense,
'Evil be to him who evil thinks'. If the story is indeed true, was the Countess his own future daughter-in-law? (see below, p. 55).
Gaunt could well have claimed it for himself, as the oldest surviving son of the dead King. So too - though with rather less justification -could Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, son-in-law of John's elder brother Lionel, Duke of Clarence, who had walked with Edward's three sons immediately behind the coffin at his funeral. But Edward, doddering as he may have been, had taken all possible precautions to ensure a smooth transfer of power. 'On Christmas Day
1376
,'
writes Froissart,
